Here is a true story that happened to me six month ago:
My girl friend Grace wanted to go shopping and put me in the trunk, so I had to join her. We went to some discount supermarket (“Plus”) and she bought veggies, I bought meat, she bought tooth paste, I bought sweets. Then I stumbled about a nice offer: “400GB external USB-HDD for 99€” with a sticker saying “Samsung-HDD inside”. 99 was pretty cheap at that time and my experience with Samsung-HDDs is very good, so I put one in our shopping cart.
Back home I stored the meat and attached the new hdd to my laptop. Plopp – new drive found, drivers installed, everything cool. I did a format which went through quickly. “Here you are – congratulation to you new hard disc! – 3 GB ready to go.”
Uhm.. wait a moment. I didn’t expect 400, but something like 370GB found be fine. 3 GB is a little lesser than I expected. Hmm..
unattached it, attached it again – 3GB.
did another format – 3GB.
looked for a software or even a bios update for my laptop – up to date.
did some silly Google searched – nothing found.
tried another computer – 3GB.
Hmm… I started thinking… okay, let’s face it – 1 kb is officially reduced to 10byte, they just didn’t inform you. Or maybe there is something wrong with the wires inside, a pin broken for the higher bytes or something. I fetched my mini screw driver and opened the case. Looked okay, the cable was clean and in place, the pins seemed fine. There was a little table in a blue font giving numbers of sectors, cylinders and heads, but I couldn’t find any information on the size. Then I saw the brand: Maxtor. Maxtor? It was supposed to be a Samsung, wasn’t it? … What the heck?!? Suddenly the light of realization hit me very, very hard. I sat in silence for minutes – in deep disbelieve. It was sooo simple.
Some criminal had bought the original 400GB-HDD and replaced it with his (or her) old 3GB. Then he (or she) had taken it back to the shop, saying it wouldn’t work. He would get another one or his money back. Buy one – get one free. Bastard!
When I discovered this I felt like Monk and I was very excited. I went back to the shop, asked for the store manager (which was a friendly woman who looked like YarYar Binggs) and told her everything. Her reaction was very… well.. minimalistic and a little disappointing – all she did was to hand me a new hdd. (That one was 400GB)
Later I found I should have tried to recover some data from the 3GB-HDD, perhaps I could have helped to arrest a thief of 397GB but the good ideas are always late…
Have a good night and don’t let the bed bug bite you.
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